Tuesday, 27 March 2012

The King of Fighters Collection

The King of Fighters officially abbreviated KOF, is a series of fighting games by SNK Playmore (formerly SNK).

The series was originally developed for SNK's Neo Geo MVS arcade hardware, which served as the main platform for the series until 2004, when SNK retired the MVS in favor of the Atomiswave arcade board. Only two King of Fighters games were made on the Atomiswave platform (The King of Fighters Neowave and The King of Fighters XI) before SNK decided to discontinue using the platform for the series. The current arcade hardware for the series is the Taito Type X2, with its first usage coming with the release of The King of Fighters XII. Ports of the arcade games and original The King of Fighters games have been released for several video games consoles.

The first game in the series, The King of Fighters '94, was released by SNK on August 25, 1994.[1] The game featured characters from SNK's previous fighting game series Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting, as well as original characters (including characters from older games such as Ikari Warriors and Psycho Soldier, adapted for a versus fighting game). The success of the game led SNK to release yearly installments of the series and numbered the games for the year they were released. The King of Fighters '95 was released on July 25, 1995, with several ports being released the next year. In addition to adding new characters, this game also began the first story arc of the series titled "The Orochi Saga". KOF '95 was also the first game in the series that allowed the players to create their own team of three members, out of any character in the game.[2] The King of Fighters '96, released on July 30, 1996, establishes the second part of "The Orochi Saga" and replaced the character sprites from the previous two years with newly drawn ones, improving the gameplay of the series as well. Depending on the playable characters in a team, an exclusive ending will be played.[3] The King of Fighters '97, released on July 28, 1997, concluded "The Orochi Saga" story arc.[4] The King of Fighters '98 was released on July 23, 1998, and unlike the previous games of the series, it did not feature a story. Instead, the game was promoted as a "Dream Match" game that allowed players to choose most of the characters available from the previous titles, including ones that were supposedly dead. SNK refitted the Dreamcast version and renamed it The King of Fighters: Dream Match 1999 with an extended cel animated introduction and 3D backgrounds.[5]On July 22, 1999, The King of Fighters '99 was released, which introduced a new story arc known as "The NESTS Chronicles". The game introduces several new characters into the series, as well as the rule of a fourth member being added to each team and that a new tactic is introduced in this game as well. The tactic would be that a specific person from a team would be an assistant called a "Striker" and that this person would be able to aid the team for a few seconds in combat. The Dreamcast version was titled The King of Fighters: Evolution, with several improvements in the game such as new strikers and better animation.[6] The King of Fighters 2000 was released on July 26, 2000, and is the second part of "The NESTS Chronicles". It adds a few new playable characters and a couple of Strikers (most of them being from previous KOF titles and other SNK titles as well such as Metal Slug and Kizuna Encounter).[7] The King of Fighters 2001 was released on November 15, 2001, and ends the second story arc. Due to economic problems that SNK had at the time, the Korean company Eolith helped in the development of the game.[8] The King of Fighters 2002, released on October 10, 2002, was created to reunite old characters from previous KOF games and featured no story, similar to KOF '98. It was also developed by Eolith.A new KOF story arc called the "Tales of Ash" starts in The King of Fighters 2003, released on December 12, 2003. It allowed the players to change characters while playing, but the number of team members was reduced back to three. SNK, now SNK-Playmore, returned to the franchise development in this entry.[9] By 2004, SNK abandoned yearly releases of the series and numbered future games in a more traditional manner;[10] the first main series game released as such was The King of Fighters XI, released on October 26, 2005.[11] The King of Fighters XII was released in July 2009. KOF XII uses newly-drawn 2D sprites on detailed 2D backgrounds. Producers informed that the game is one hundred percent hand drawn.[12] It is to be a storyless gathering of fighters, similar to KOFs '98 and 2002 before it. The latest story arc ends with The King of Fighters XIII, which features the entire roster from The King of Fighters XII as well as additional characters and was released during the summer of 2010.

This Game collection Contains the following games

The King of Fighter 94

The King of Fighter 95The King of Fighter 97The King of Fighter 98The King of Fighter 99The King of Fighter 2000

Friday, 23 March 2012

Tennis fans should be in heaven after playing Virtua Tennis.

Tennis isn't exactly one of those sports games that people get terribly excited over. You don't see any yearly tennis franchises out there, so a good tennis game is hard to find. Luckily, Virtua Tennis features an easy control scheme, great graphics, and exciting gameplay that will probably manage to rope in a few non-tennis fans along the way.

Because Virtua Tennis is a port of an arcade game, its main mode is nice and short. You pick one of several real-life tennis players, choose singles or doubles play, and move through several stages of increasing difficulty. There's also an exhibition mode that lets you choose a court, put two or four players on it, and play for kicks. You can also customize the rules, setting the number of wins required to end a match, disabling the advantage rule, and so on. Exhibition mode also serves as the game's best mode for multiplayer games, which are a real blast. The meat of the single-player game is in its questlike world-circuit mode. In the world circuit, you start out staring at a world map, as you do in Street Fighter Alpha 3's world-tour mode. Different spots on the map correspond to different challenges. Some are simple singles matches, some are doubles, and some are minigames in which you train. The training levels, which include activities such as aiming at bowling pins, lobbing tennis balls into cans, knocking boxes off the court, and aiming at a bull's-eye target painted on the court, are all pretty cool. Along the way, you'll be earning money, which can be spent in the tennis shop. In the shop, you can unlock extra tennis players for the game's other modes, purchase new outfits, and contract partners so that you can play in world-circuit doubles matches.

The control mirrors the old Nintendo Tennis game for the NES - you use one button for standard swings and another for lobs. Of course, you have significantly more control over the ball, as you can push in a direction while hitting the ball to aim it at different parts of the court. This lets you force the opposing player to run back and forth quite a bit. While it's pretty easy to judge the ball's trajectory and get to it when you're playing on the close side of the court, you'll have to get used to judging the ball's location using only its shadow when you're playing on the far side of the court, which makes for a slightly tougher match. But after a few matches, you'll get used to playing on both sides of the court. In one-player games, you can use an alternate camera angle that gives you a behind-the-back view of the action, but this makes it even harder to properly judge the ball.The character models have a nice look to them. The players are realistic, with little features like fingers and teeth. Of course, these little touches are noticeable only during the replay mode, which shows a close-up of the action, using an exaggerated version of the blurring effect made popular by Metal Gear Solid. On the audio side, things like balls hitting rackets and on-court voices all sound very nice, but they're a bit marred by a few tracks of bothersome, poppy guitar-rock.

Tennis fans should be in heaven after playing Virtua Tennis. While the game doesn't exactly have a simulation-styled approach, it's definitely a blast to play, and the multiplayer and world-circuit options give it replay value regardless of how many controllers you have.

Sunday, 18 March 2012

Final Fight

represents straightforward arcade brawling at its absolute best. That the entire arcade game now fits in your pocket is quite frankly insane

Final Fight is the best game ever made. If you don't agree with that statement, consider the following words: Bred, Andore Jr., G. Oriber, Edi E., Two P, and, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Metro-City Mayor Mike Haggar.These are some of the most unforgettable characters in gaming history, and they all appeared first in Final Fight. If you're still not impressed, then stop reading now--you won't appreciate Final Fight One, an almost perfect translation of the arcade original.

In case you're unfamiliar with the Final Fight legend, but were impressed by the list of characters and so are still reading, here's the deal: Final Fight is the seminal side-scrolling beat-'em up. Technically, Double Dragon may have come first, but Final Fight perfected the genre. Imagine Street Fighter if it wasn't designed for monocle-wearing fancy-lads--if it had a more meat-and-potatoes combat system, involved fighting a lot more than one enemy at a time, featured plenty of smashing barrels with your fist to see if there's any treasure or hunks of meat inside, and required a lot more walking to the right. And then imagine that not only can you punish the thugs by pile-driving them, but you can also make them cry by busting up their cars. Then stop imagining, because it's all contained in Final Fight.

The Game Boy Advance version is a little miracle. It's the best translation of the arcade game to date. First of all, it contains all six of the arcade levels, including the industrial area left out of the 1990 Super Nintendo translation. And unlike that version, Final Fight One features all three of the original characters--the all-arounder Cody, the beefy Haggar, and the agile Guy. More importantly, it permits two people to play cooperatively using two systems and a link cable. Even more importantly, the two-player mode works great and doesn't slow down when there's a lot of activity onscreen, which is pretty much all the time because that's how the people who play Final Fight like it.

Unfortunately, the translation isn't completely perfect. For some reason, the two female punks, Roxy and Poison, have been replaced by generic male punks. This was true of the SNES version as well, but that hardly excuses it. There are also some small graphical changes--the arcade's flickering fluorescent light effect is gone as are a few background animations. The game's soundtrack suffers somewhat in translation too.

There are five difficulty options ranging from very easy to very hard. You're allotted a limited number of continues, but unlike in the arcade and SNES versions, progress is saved after every level. One mildly annoying feature is that the two-player mode gives you unlimited retries with no option to restrict the number of continues. Of course, you can simply decide to permit only a certain number of retries, but seriously, everyone knows those kinds of honorable resolutions never last very long.

Perhaps to make up for the small ways in which Final Fight One deviates from its arcade inspiration, a few bonuses have been included. There are now some small cutscenes before each of the boss battles. It's not a huge thing, but they do include some excellent new tough-guy dialogue such as "Shut your mouth up! Get Ready!" There's also a point system that unlocks a series of bonuses. None of the bonuses amount to much, however. There's nothing even as good as, say, a portrait gallery. About the best bonus is an option to make Guy and Cody wear their Street Fighter Alpha clothes. The rest are all along the lines of extra lives, a level select, and other pretty mundane rewards.

Still, the great thing about Final Fight is that it's a timeless game. Whether it's your first time through the game or your seven hundredth, shoulder-tossing one punk into a group of his oncoming friends remains a thrilling experience. It may not be deep in the Virtua Fighter smarty-pants sense, but it is deeply satisfying. Final Fight represents straightforward arcade brawling at its absolute best. That the entire arcade game now fits in your pocket is quite frankly insane.

System REquirments:

Processor= 233MHz

RAM= 64MB

Graphics= 16MB

Instructions:

Download Game

Press "O" and "K" for game Start

Enjoy:-)

Tuesday, 13 March 2012

SuperMario Forever 4 is really a classic Mario remake. Once again you strap on your wrench and hardhat and guide the chubby plumber through many skillfully made levels. The diversity of the levels is very impressive. You will have to get through levels ranging from underwater caverns to levels filled with hot lava. Version 4 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.

If you remember the oldest of Mario games, you cannot just pass this title by! Mario Forever is a remake of the classic Super Mario Bros game, which will make you busy for long hours, even if you haven't played Mario before! Impersonate the friendly plumber once more to guide him through 8 different worlds of this platform game, through countless monsters and obstacles, to help him beat the evil dragon Koopa and save the imprisoned Princess Peach – all while listening to pleasant, cheerful music. Mario Forever has also renewed graphics and much better scrolling in comparison to the original Mario. Of course, there are also many novelties in the gameplay – an option to save your game, brand new enemies and bonuses are only a few of them! However, fans of the original old Mario don't have to fear – it is still the same game, only upgraded. Collecting coins, jumping into the pipes, hidden levels – there are still here! Don't hesitate to download Mario Forever now – but remember, this video game is really addictive

System Requirements:

Processor= 500MHz

RAM= 64MB

Graphics= 16MB

Saturday, 10 March 2012

Cadillacs and DinosaursThe Arcade Game (known in Japan as Cadillacs Kyouryuu Shin Seiki) is a 1992 arcade game released by Capcom. It is a beat ‘em up based upon the comic Xenozoic Tales which was created by Mark Schultz in the late eighties. The game-play is like that of many other side-scrolling beat’em up games of the time, such as Streets of Rage or Final Fight. A distinctive feature of this game is the frequent use of firearms, rarely seen on other games of its kind, which normallyfavored weapons such as bottles and knives. There is also a sequence in which the player can get control of the titular vehicle by radioing for it. It is difficult to keep the car intact for long, because the boss at the end of the sequence (Hogg) is armed with grenades.

Wednesday, 7 March 2012

The Sonic series takes to the track in the combat racing game, Sonic Riders can occasionally be quite entertaining, but too many of those entertaining moments are overridden by bouts of frustration and weak mechanics.

Like most popular platformer franchises, the Sonic series has dabbled in the racing genre in the past with games like Sonic R for the Saturn.Despite the factthat Sonic's already-speedy nature might seem like a perfect fit for a racing game of some sort, the results of these attempts have been disappointing thus far. Sonic Riders is the latest attempt to get Sonic back on the race track, though this one eschews the typical kart- and foot-racing brands of racing usually found in a racer starring popular platformer heroes. Instead, Riders gives Sonic and pals their very own Back to the Future II-style hoverboards, which they can use to dart and dash around wacky tracks of varying levels of difficulty. Unfortunately, Sonic Riders isn't much better than any of Sega's previous attempts to make Sonic a racing hero, simply because it can't quite keep its diverse and chaotic racing mechanics together in one cohesive package. There are times when you'll find yourself enjoying how blazingly fast the game can go and other times when you'll be frustrated beyond belief by the very same thing. And that's all within a single race.

The premise behind Sonic Riders is going to be utterly impenetrable to anyone but the most ardent Sonic fans. Along with his pals Knuckles and Tails, Sonic is, once again, on the hunt for chaos emeralds. Suddenly, the team witnesses the theft of an emerald by some very edgy, cute-looking thieves riding hoverboards (or, "extreme gear," as they're known in the game). Not long after that, Dr. Eggman shows up and starts rambling about wanting to hold an extreme-gear racing tournament for some reason or another. It turns out that the thieves are part of a crew of legendary thieves known as the Babylon Rogues, and there's a whole thing about trying to rediscover the long-hidden island of Babylon, which harbors some kind of treasure...or something like that. It's a completely incoherent storyline, not to mention one that rehashes a lot of stuff that has been done 20 times better in just about every other Sonic game every made. Evil plots are hatched, Sonic and Knuckles get into it with the bad guys, Tails says a few overly precocious things, and so on and so forth. Then again, this is a racing game, so the plot is really incidental to the whole package. Still, this game probably would have been much better off going the minimalist story route, like the Mario Kart games.

The racing in Sonic Riders is kind of an odd mishmash of F-Zero GX-style futuristic racing and something like SSX. When you get going during a race, the pace can be extremely quick--as it should be in a racing game starring Sonic--but pure speed isn't enough to win. There are a number of secondary mechanics and meters you'll have to concern yourself with to succeed regularly. First and foremost, you'll find yourself monitoring your air meter, which depletes every time you hit the boost button. Incidentally, that's going to be a lot of the time. To keep up, you're going to find yourself hitting that boost an awful lot, especially in the early goings, when you're still trying to figure out the layouts of the tracks and all the shortcuts. That's bad, because once you're out of air, your character jumps off his or her board and starts running until you can find a pit to stop in for a moment to recharge. Running into objects on the track also kills your air. While that makes some measure of sense, the whole pit-stop aspect of the game sucks a lot of the fun out of the racing. The whole point of the game is that you're going along at increasingly blinding speeds, trying to ride as much momentum as possible; it doesn't make much sense that you suddenly have to stop and recharge because you accidentally hit a wall after boosting a bunch. Not to mention that the pits themselves aren't even all that out of the way on the tracks, so you may find yourself running into them accidentally every now and then.

Fortunately, some of the other concepts in the gameplay pan out a bit better. One of the cooler things Sonic Riders has to offer is the turbulence-riding mechanic. Essentially, as other racers zoom along the tracks, they give off streams of turbulence that you can ride into and get a big speed boost out of. Turbulence sort of takes the game out of your hands, though, because you could easily ride it out without ever touching a button. But if you did that, you'd miss out on the opportunity to pull off some tricks. Yes, there's a rudimentary trick system in Sonic Riders. Whether you're riding turbulence or taking big jumps, all you need to do is spin the left analog stick (or, if you're unlucky enough not to have a dual analog gamepad to go along with the PC version of the game, hold down one of the directional arrow keys) and you'll pull off a few neat flips and spins. It's nothing deep, but pulling off tricks is a necessary enjoyment, because doing them and landing correctly afterward nets you sizable air boosts. There are also some unique shortcuts that various characters can take depending on what class they fall under. Power racers, for instance, can simply bowl through certain obstacles on the track without losing a bit of speed, whereas speed racers can grind various rails scattered throughout a course. As nice an idea as the class system is, it doesn't make much difference to the gameplay. You can pick just about any racer in the game and play pretty much the same way without much consequence.

That's mainly because the track designs lend themselves to the same level of frustration, no matter which character you're playing as. While all the tracks are built with the sorts of launch ramps, loop-de-loops, and other craziness you'd expect, they're not nearly as much fun to race around as you might hope. For one thing, the game relies a little too heavily on taking corners perfectly. These tracks are littered with the sorts of blind jumps and turns that cause you to go flying off the course and have to reset yourself, and you'll often lose the race as a result. You can't always correct this by practicing, either. Sometimes you'll be taking a corner perfectly, only to run into a wall of turbulence that you can't bust into to ride because you're not traveling fast enough, which in turn bumps you off the edge of the course. The tracks can be pleasing to look at, and there are more than enough shortcuts, jumps, and other fun things to race around, but the tracks are simply too short, too loose, and too frustrating to keep up with what the fast-paced racing requires.

The controls also leave something to be desired. It makes sense that trying to control an ultrafast hoverboard would be a little loose, but the controls are unwieldy in a lot of spots. When you're in a position to grind a rail, you have to press the jump button to get up, and then press it again to grind, which seems unnecessary. When you want to round a tight corner, you need to hold down one of the trigger buttons to sort of slow down and lean into the turn. What the game fails to mention is that if you hold down the button for a half-second too long, you'll overshoot the turn and go crashing into the opposing wall. It's irritating, to say the least. Additionally, if you're playing this game on the PC, get a dual analog gamepad or don't even bother playing it. Trying to control this game with arrow keys instead of analog sticks is like trying to steer a car with your teeth--not ideal, and rather harrowing at that.

If nothing else, Sonic Riders fares better as a multiplayer game than as a single-player one. The artificially intelligent racers tend to run very predictable races, so getting into the multiplayer arena does away with that problem, though the fact that the PC version supports only two total players negates some of that appeal. There are also quite a few modes to choose from apart from normal races and the story mode. There's a mission mode, in which you're tasked to perform specific tricks to beat the Babylon Rogues team; a survival mode that includes both standard battle and race variants; and a tag mode, in which two teams of two racers, each of which share a single air tank, race through a selected track. None of these modes are any better than the standard races, but at least there is a good bit of variety available. On top of all that, the game lets you acquire a lot of unlockables, including new extreme gear, as well as plenty of hidden characters, some of which are certain to get longtime Sega fans giddy with glee.

Sonic Riders isn't a bad-looking game by any means. Save for a few sporadic bursts of frame rate slowdown, the game moves at an excellent clip, providing exactly the sort of speed you'd expect. The levels and characters are bright and colorful, though when you slow down, some of the track areas look kind of drab and muddy. A copious number of CG cutscenes are interspersed throughout the story mode, and while the scenes themselves are reasonably clean looking, they're not anything special, either. The PC version of the game looks about on par with the Xbox version released earlier in the year. The game runs at a maximum resolution of only 1024x768, and even with all the various antialiasing and texture settings cranked up, it looks like a slightly muddy console port. Less impressive is the game's audio. The voice acting is about as hammy as in any other Sonic game, but the incessant chatter of the female race announcer tends to grate as you're speeding along. The music and sound effects are mostly generic, and nothing about them stands out.

Sonic Riders is arguably the best Sonic-themed racer out there, but it does little to distinguish itself amid an already overcrowded platformer-turned-racer market. The use of the extreme gear in lieu of the usual cartoon racer vehicles is a nice twist, and there is a bounty of content for you to get through, but the racing itself isn't strong enough to keep the game afloat for long. Ultimately, Riders is a racer that provides some decent fan service to the Sega loyal, but not much else. And if you are one of those devout Sega loyalists, track down Sonic Riders on just about any other platform than the PC, because this is hardly the ideal way to play the game.

Sunday, 4 March 2012

is the professional standard in digital imaging, with an endless selection of drawing tools, filters, and color-adjustment capabilities for manipulating items in almost any way. Originally designed for bitmap images, Photoshop lets you create eye-catching typography by placing text on paths or within shapes, perform shadow and highlight correction, explore expanded color-matching features, parlay efficient layer comps, andpreview, search, and share images. Oh, and it's also the premiere program for managing home digital printing.

CS3 Extended includes support for rendering and integrating 3D images into 2D composites and video layer editing. There's also a greatly modified help menu to take the edge off your learning curve, with built-in how-to's on Preparing Art for Other Applications, Printing Photos, Working with Color and Type, and more. From simply lightening dark photos to improving color and contrast, to adding objects or people that weren't originally in the picture, Photoshop is an excellent tool whose innovative features meet any professional need.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended is ideal for film, video, and multimedia professionals and graphic and Web designers using 3D and motion, as well as professionals in engineering and science, Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended software delivers everything in Photoshop CS3 and more. Render and incorporate 3D images into your 2D composites. Stop time with easy editing of motion graphics on video layers. And probe your images with measurement, analysis, and visualization tools.

Thursday, 1 March 2012

Action game fans ought to be able to settle in and blast their ways through Total Overdose's relatively brief campaign with reasonable levels of enjoyment. Just be prepared for one extremely cheesy ride.

Rarely has a game reveled in its own crapulence the way that Total Overdose: A Gunslinger's Tale in Mexico does. Taking the concept of a stylish, violent third-person shooter to the height of hyperactive instability, Total Overdose is an all-out celebration of all things gun.Bullets fly with reckless abandon, bodies pile up to an almost alarming degree, and all the while you're pulling off the kinds of acrobatic maneuvers that would make Keanu Reeves say, "Woah." Of course, it's also all been done before. From playing Total Overdose, you get the feeling that the developers at Deadline Games had an awful lot of affection for the Grand Theft Auto and Max Payne games and that they may have watched one too many Robert Rodriguez movies late at night. That's because the main character plays just like Max Payne, the world around him operates just like the one in Grand Theft Auto, and the storyline plays out like a script Rodriguez might have written early in his career, before he knew what he was doing. Because it's made up of so many familiar parts, action game fans ought to be able to settle in and blast their ways through Total Overdose's relatively brief campaign with reasonable levels of enjoyment. Just be prepared for one extremely cheesy ride, and to sift through a few serious flaws as well.

The story of Total Overdose is cut from the kind of heavy-on-the-gunplay, light-on-the-drama cloth made famous in 1980s-era action films. Ramiro Cruz is an ex-convict and all-around screwup. His twin brother works for the DEA. Ramiro's twin is injured while working undercover, right as he's about to get in with some rather powerful drug lords down in Mexico. In a twist that plays like a vaquero movie version of the Anthony Hopkins/Chris Rock vehicle Bad Company, Ramiro is brought in to replace his brother so he can get in with the shady dealers. About a billion bullets, bodies, and busts later, you're dealing with crooked DEA agents, big-time drug deals, and a revenge plot about who really killed Ramiro's former-DEA-agent father. None of this means a thing, mind you. The plot here is merely a vehicle for you to get out and start shooting things. What little storyline exists here is largely turned irrelevant by the incredibly cheesy voice acting and writing, so there's no real opportunity to care about any of these people. But that suits the game just fine, since you'll be too busy killing everybody to bother caring about them.

What makes Total Overdose more than just another dull shoot-'em-up is the ludicrousness of its action. There isn't a kilo of realism to be found anywhere in this game...a fact flaunted at every opportunity by the insane acrobatic moves Ramiro can pull off for seemingly no reason other than because they're fun. Like Max Payne, Ramiro can shoot-dodge in bullet time while pumping tons of rounds into bad guys within a split second's time, all the while bouncing off walls and spinning around like a man possessed. These moves all play into a points rating that judges the different maneuvers you pull off and earns you points you'll need to complete missions. It's a neat system, but it's hindered by the most obnoxious aspect of the game, which (oddly enough) is the naming system for said moves. Moves are named the cheesiest things possible, like "Gringo loco!" and the oft-repeated "Spicy move!" In fact, you'll hear the words "spicy move" so often throughout the game that after a while a small piece of you will die inside every time it's uttered.

Thankfully, the basic shooting is reasonably satisfying. You're given plenty of different weapons with varying degrees of effectiveness. Fully automatic guns pump more rounds, but they also lack accuracy. Pistols are accurate, but they lack punch. Assault rifles tend to offer the best of both worlds. Rocket and grenade launchers? Well, you can imagine the level of destruction they inflict. If there's any complaint to be made here, it's that you often get the short shrift on ammo. There are upgrades you can earn throughout to give each gun type more available ammo. But even then, in a game this silly--where it's all about highly unrealistic action--you'd think the developer might have been a touch more generous with the ammunition. As it is, it's far too easy to run out of ammo for all guns very quickly, forcing you to constantly run around to pick up weapons off fallen enemies, which can be a risky affair in the middle of a firefight.

Ramiro can also earn a number of wacky special moves that border on comedic. Simply press a button and one of several select moves will occur, ranging from a kooky jumping spin move with dual Uzis blazing, to the appearance of an angry Mexican wrestler who will aid you by attacking any nearby enemies. Don't question it, because you'll absolutely despise this game if you try to put much thought into it. If you're willing to roll with the crazy Mexican wrestlers, the exploding piñatas, and the move called "El Mariachi," which straight-up gives you the Antonio Banderas-style "guns in the guitar cases" from the titular Robert Rodriguez film (though they should have called it "Desperado," since that's the actual film the move is from), Total Overdose can be a hysterical romp (though often unintentionally so).

Don't expect Total Overdose to be an especially challenging piece of work though, because it fails miserably in this regard. The enemy artificial intelligence borders on damaged. Bad guys will sometimes run around in circles, shooting at nothing in particular, or they'll get stuck in parts of the scenery. The only time they're at all hard is when there are just too many of them, and even then you can enact the game's "rewind" feature to just reverse time back a few seconds to avoid whatever bullet killed you a moment ago. Ramiro's special moves can also be abused to almost depressing levels. All it takes is one bout of El Mariachi to blow away just about any boss, without taking any damage yourself. Not that you need to cheat like this, since most bosses can be beaten just as easily with some nifty shoot dodging, but even still, exploits like this are prevalent throughout the game.

Total Overdose's Grand Theft Auto inspirations come from the vision of Mexico that the developer has created for you to play around in. The city you work in is largely open-ended, with plenty of pedestrians, ancillary traffic, buildings, and multiple locales, which unfortunately can't be jumped to without some load times. Additionally, these locations are also often difficult to find, since the in-game map is absolute garbage. As you wander around, you can look around for hidden bonuses and items, or you can just shoot the hell out of anyone who crosses your path. Unlike in GTA, though, there are really no consequences for your actions. Some cops might show up, but that's as far as it escalates, which effectively turns the process into a pretty dull affair. You get your missions by driving to icons located on the aforementioned terrible map, though it's at least good enough to denote the difference between a story mission and a side mission.

Side missions are mostly secondary and optional, though there are a few instances where you'll be required to do one or two side missions before the next story mission is available. Most of these are pretty simple "kill everyone in sight," checkpoint race, or "blow up a few burrito carts filled with cocaine" types of things, but they're fun enough for what they need to be. The story missions are longer and much more involved, often with multiple sections and plenty of heavy combat against drug runners, border patrol officers, and just about anyone else who might cross your path. The game is absolutely rife with save points, though, so you'll almost never find yourself having to repeat a lengthy section of the game. However, in the rare instance that you do, it's super-annoying.

There are also plenty of vehicles in the game, and they easily represent the least fun you'll have with any aspect of the gameplay. The cars handle in a very squirrelly manner, like the General Lee on a greased hockey rink or something. Fortunately, apart from the occasional checkpoint race, it's rare that you'll have to drive for more than a short distance. Often, cars are simply an optional means to an end, rather than a required piece of equipment for a mission. That's good, because if you had to drive for long bouts with these absolutely atrocious driving physics, you'd break the disc in half before you got anywhere near the end of the game.

Total Overdose certainly has style, but this isn't a particularly good-looking game. The character models are drab and blocky, and they don't animate as smoothly as they ought to. The rare exceptions are the style moves, but even they can be occasionally weird-looking. The cities are better-looking, and there are plenty of colorful set pieces decorating the background. However, the things going on in the background are frequently ugly. People dive out of the way of cars that aren't anywhere near them, cars will sometimes drive onto pieces of the scenery and get stuck there, and all manner of other little crazy glitches will go on--especially if you're involved in gunplay. The three versions of the game are all comparable, with only the PlayStation 2's lackluster frame rate setting it a notch or two lower than the rest. The PC game also does have a tendency to chug a bit, but it's marginal at most.

The game's sound manages to be both better and worse all at once. The voice acting, as mentioned before, is awful, though perhaps intentionally so. All the dialogue is terribly cheesy, and the actors ham it up to the nth degree. The credits list a number of Latino actors as playing the parts here, but most of them overdo the accents and slang so ludicrously that it all sounds forced and poorly stereotyped. However, the soundtrack is, in a word, tough. Featuring a smattering of songs from Latino rap group Delinquent Habits and Mexico City rap-metal group Molotov, the music complements the hard-edged tone of the game perfectly. What's more, a number of action sequences kick in with random bits of traditional flamenco guitars and upbeat mariachi tunes. Surprisingly, the jauntiness of these tracks sets a delightfully comedic contrast to the shooting, and it just plain works. The sound effects for the weapons, explosions, and whatnot are all effective enough, so you won't get any shortage of thunderous booms and bullet-riddled screams throughout the experience.

Total Overdose is one of those games that presents a conundrum. Most people shouldn't buy it, as it's far too short, too patently ridiculous, and too weak outside of its combat to be worth the money. Conversely, the game's utterly ludicrous nature makes for a fairly entertaining ride at times, and the shooting can be quite fun. Shooter fans on the hunt for something brainless and easy, but with lots of stylish gunplay, should certainly rent Total Overdose just to see how bananas the whole thing is. Those with slightly more-discerning tastes ought to just leave well enough alone and look elsewhere for their needs.

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